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Predictions

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Oct 27th 2003 1:26am





How Long Until The Internet Is Brought Down?

from the fear-mongering dept

It's been at least a few weeks since someone has written an article worrying about a massive cyber attack, so up steps Newsweek to take on the issue suggesting that it's only a matter of time until someone with malicious intentions brings down the entire internet for a week or more. That's quite a prediction. While you can never say never, I would imagine it's not quite as easy as the article makes it out to be. In fact, if you read the article carefully, you see that just about any online attack would need to be accompanied by a physical attack at some heavily guarded locations. Again, this is possible, but it's not as simple as the article suggests. While, undoubtedly, such an attack would be costly for many businesses and a general pain for people all over the place, I'm not sure it would be as catastrophic as everyone makes it out to be.

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    dorpus, Oct 27th, 2003 @ 2:47am

    Just attack the power grid

    As the east coast power outage illustrated, snapping one wire on an overloaded grid causes a chain reaction. If a group of 50 terrorists shorted out high-powered lines all over the country with tinfoil kites, won't America go black?

     

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    Tony Lawrence, Oct 27th, 2003 @ 3:51am

    Internet down

    Worms like SoBig didn't bring the internet down, but they certainly slowed it down.

    What would happen if we had a half dozen like that at the same time?

     

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    Anonymous Coward, Oct 27th, 2003 @ 8:51am

    Speaking of end of the world scenarios...

    What if drop reproduced? :O

     

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    Crapmaster T, Oct 27th, 2003 @ 1:45pm

    No Subject Given

    You can't take down the entire internet. It's impossible. Mainly, because it doesn't actually exist. Not tangibly anyway. The only thing that could destroy the internet is a world wide dark age where the information about how things work is destroyed, along with all the fibre optic cable in the world, every computer, and every library with anything computer science related in it.
    Even then, there's a chance that two computer burried in a cave somewhere will still be able to talk to each other, making the whole exercise vague, and ill intentioned.
    The internet was specifically designed to withstand global nuclear devistation. I think we'll be able to survive the next ten, fifteen, or a thousand viruses.
    There's a word for this kind of journalism, if you could call it journalism at all.

     

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    •  
      identicon
      Joe Schmoe, Oct 27th, 2003 @ 7:49pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      That's the real genies' bottle aspect of the internet. The only thing that will bring it down is the [lack of] desire [on the whole of, now, humanity] to keep it around or it is replaced by something better. I don't know about the something better part, but just the thought of it (at this point) not existing is staggering. Even I make a portion of my income directly from its existence.

       

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      •  
        identicon
        nocrap, Oct 28th, 2003 @ 12:42am

        Re: No Subject Given

        Please don't spread that stupid notion that the Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attack. ****NO IT WAS NOT!***** Urban legend, now let's just move on as there is nothing to see here.

         

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